I think you and Don are spot on in terms of why these lists are produced and didn’t really think about it from the community sharing/helping perspective (which I suppose at some level is more important than whether someone is good at SEO or not). In terms of your last point I would love to have access to some reporting/data for some of the larger SEO agencies just to see whether they really practice what they preach!

You make a valid point and I’ve always wondered about this sort of thing… in my view and in my experience many of the true “Best SEOs” are the unsung heroes who tend to keep to themselves.

With few exceptions I always try to create lists, give props or FF’s to people that either share the best content with me, are most helpful to their users (i.e. respond to Tweets/questions, etc.) or that I have actually worked with and I know for a fact are brilliant SEOs even if they don’t talk much about SEO on major blogs.

In any event, the long and short of it is that without access to case studies, client feedback and/or working directly with someone the lists are pretty arbitrary if they’re about “best SEOs”. However, if they are about “best sharers or creators of SEO content” – as you say – well that’s a bit easier for all to judge.

As a minor aside, some of the work that I’ve seen second hand from some of the “best SEO agencies” based on industry reputation and positioning would make me quite sceptical of any such list.